In a society where everything is for sale, how could Justice be exempt?

(Hard work, my sweet furry ass! The richest produce nothing and do no useful work at all; just shuffle other people's money with very sticky hands. The ones who commit robbery on the grandest scale never need a lawyer: they make the law.)

(17-10-2011 07:47 PM)Peterkin Wrote: In a society where everything is for sale, how could Justice be exempt?

(Hard work, my sweet furry ass! The richest produce nothing and do no useful work at all; just shuffle other people's money with very sticky hands. The ones who commit robbery on the grandest scale never need a lawyer: they make the law.)

It IS of great interest, Hierophant, so much so that I must quote you here.

After the quote I could just say: "I rest my case"!

(17-10-2011 10:53 PM)Hierophant Wrote: Argument #5: An adversarial justice system is the most efficient way to arrive at the truth of a matter.

Answer: What a ridiculous belief! In no other area of life do we base our evaluation of the truth on some kind of tug-of-war between two distorted, extreme positions on either side of an issue. Any truth that comes out of such a process will come out despite the adversarial process, not because of it.

In other areas, this kind of adversarial process is seen as hopelessly divorced from the truth. In science, for instance, we consider partisan research and studies to be innately suspicious. There, we acknowledge that any search for truth has to start from reality-based evidence, not on misleading testimonies and distorted half-truths.

In our personal life, we don’t use adversarial processes to determine some truth. We weigh the credible evidence available to us, and seek out more evidence whenever we feel we don’t have enough. We don’t go to the most distorted sources on both sides and try to balance their half-truths.

Beyond the fundamental absurdity of an adversarial process used to determine truth, there are also systemic pressures which derive from that process and distort the truth even more. One example is the fact that people who are poor are more likely to be found guilty than people who can afford the best lawyers. This is a direct result of the adversarial process. The only way to abolish this injustice, and others of its kind, is to abolish the adversarial process.

The inquisitorial trial (no relation to the Inquisition), used in parts of Europe (especially France and Germany), Africa, South America and Asia, is the main alternative to the adversarial trial, and it offers many advantages over the latter. But the most relevant advantage of inquisitorial trials is that, unlike in our system, there is much less incentive to distort the truth. Lawyers do not make a case; rather, they have to provide the evidence they are asked for. They generally do not call witnesses or ask them questions, but they may provide their own questions or suggest lines of investigation. The main burden of fact-finding is left to the third parties, which leads to a lessened distortion of the truth.

University of North Carolina researchers John Thibaut and Laurens Walker nevertheless made extensive comparisons of the two systems [of adversarial trials and inquisitorial trials]. They concluded that an autocratic procedure which delegates both process and decision control to a disinterested third party (i.e. a model mirrored in the inquisitorial system) is optimal for determining the truth. Evidence is presented more accurately by disinterested third parties than by adversarial processes. Such a procedure “increases the likelihood of obtaining the relevant information, reduces the strain of assimilating and tracking information, and minimizes the risk of failing to reach the correct solution.”
Franklin Strier, Making Jury Trials More Truthful, chapter 3.

Thank you for posting this link!

PS. The rest of the blog is worth reading too -- I highly recommend it!

All right, then, if our society is still too primitive to institute a council of elders, and too crazy to recognize and contain its own craziness, how about taking an interim step?

The vast majority of the criminal justice system is publicly funded and government controlled. Legislation, judiciary branch, local court, judges, prisons, jails, prosecution, police forces, their housing and equipment, investigative agencies, medical examiners and forensic facilities are all public. The only fraction of the adversarial process that's private is defense attorneys. What kind of sense does this make? It puts the entire mechanism of law making, interpreting, enforcement and retribution - all paid for by the citizen - against the accused citizen - who then has to pay to defend himself against the structure that's supposed to protect him.

So, why not simply subsume that last fraction of the process? Put all criminal lawyers on salary (like teachers) and on a rota system. Next two up take the next case, one for prosecution, one for defense.
It wouldn't be as much better as we'd like, but it sure would be better than we have now.

I'm just an American atheist whose legal experience is largely derivative from serving American time.

Simple problem. No morality. Simple solution. Morality.

Everything else is derivative. Left to itself, it will develop into a technological horror show of constant surveillance, lie-detecting mind probes, and a corporate agenda where people are reduced to nothing more than units of functionality.

(18-10-2011 08:47 AM)Peterkin Wrote: So, why not simply subsume that last fraction of the process? Put all criminal lawyers on salary (like teachers) and on a rota system. Next two up take the next case, one for prosecution, one for defense. It wouldn't be as much better as we'd like, but it sure would be better than we have now.

I bet a lot of lawyers would not like this solution!

They would spin it in the usual way: "BIG GV'MENT WANTS TO TAKE YOUR FREEDOM AWAY AND INCREASE YOUR TAXES!"

And the public would obediently chant: "Justice be damned -- I WANT MY TAX-CUT"!!!!!!

...
One of the things that have always bothered me is black-and-white thinking.

You see, in science, it very rarely occurs that respectable scientists COMPLETELY and totally disagree with EVERYTHING in each others' theory.

How could they?

They are using the same data, the same hardware (their brains), studying the same universe.

What you usually have is an overlap: one scientist telling the other: "I understand what you are saying and I agree with this and that and another part, but I question this particular conclusion because....."

They LISTEN to each other, respond to the WHOLE theory, in real context, don't ignore any part of it and aim at finding a consensus.

Black-and-white thinkers don't do that.

They ignore the context, they ignore most of the arguments, pick out a few points they disagree with (without considering the reason for the conclusion) and go into flat denial.

This attitude is consistent with internal insecurity, defensiveness, ignorance and inability to focus on the fundamental structural elements of the issues discussed.

It may also reflect an inability to think outside the box, to consider drastically new ideas and to expand and integrate the issues being discussed into the scope of the big picture encompassing it all.

On the other hand, this mentality is perfectly consistent with the adversarial 'justice' system being discussed here.

So, if you tell me that you totally disagree with everything a few of us (who are against the system) have said on the subject, for me it only proves that you must be wrong.

No reasonable person could possibly disagree with EVERYTHING that other intelligent, honest and informed people have agreed about.

(19-10-2011 11:14 AM)17thknight Wrote: I shudder at the thought of a group of professional bureaucrats sitting around deciding everyone's fate. The level of corruption that would exist would be enormous.

Best get shuddering then my friend......caus its happening right now.

I feel so much, and yet I feel nothing.
I am a rock, I am the sky, the birds and the trees and everything beyond.
I am the wind, in the fields in which I roar. I am the water, in which I drown.